


don't waste your worry on me

by haloud



Series: skeleton key [1]
Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hug Therion Immediately, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 11:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16283885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: Alfyn has seen Therion's scars—the old ones he flashed to keep the world at bay, the new ones that went pink and silver under his own watchful eye—all haphazard and ugly and real.This one is different.





	don't waste your worry on me

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by this gorgeous art by @bwdrg on twitter: https://twitter.com/bwdrg/status/1048777882460282885  
> Everyone go check out their other work! Title comes from Skeleton Key by Dessa

Therion’s life adjusted to walking the world half-blind.

A life like his makes precious little space for handicap.  Eight years old he ran on twisted ankles; twelve years old he filched food from sunlit market stalls broken-fingered.  Burns and cuts, sprains and bruises, there was no avoiding them and no stopping to give them space.  Everything sized up as a challenge in Therion’s eyes in those days, but in the absence of an open window, a slipped latch, a chip in the brick—sometimes, when it came to pain, there was no way in or out but through.

(Therion was always too scared, didn’t care, never got the chance to ask Darius how he dealt.  They held the needle and thread for each other, after all, doused each other’s wounds in liquor and linen.  It should’ve come up.  It didn’t.)

Snap, adapt, reset, regrow—he pulled himself out of a ditch once, and like any good thief he never hits the same mark twice.  Falling doesn’t happen, not anymore.  He haunts the Cliftlands like his own ghost and never stands still long enough for people to see the light pass right through him.  He grows his hair long.  He moves on.

When all his other scars scabbed over, itched, and were forgotten, Therion dared to stop and take stock of the tools that remained to him.  He stripped down to nothing in an inn up-and-up enough to sport a bit of mirrored glass.  He bent and twisted, putting himself through his paces until even when he closed his eyes—his lungs caught—even _in darkness_ he pictured reality as it was, rather than his body as it used to be without its yards of gnarled scars.  Lest he forget and ever again look over his shoulder and find any comfort in what’s walking beside him.

Then the healer comes, and suddenly there are shortcuts.  Quick concoctions that dull the pain or take away dreams.  Subtler poisons that put people to sleep so they see nothing and don’t have to die.  Steady hands and an honest tongue.

 _Soften,_ he says, _open,_ he says, _let me in._ He packs Therion’s wounds in stinging poultices; he makes them stop to offer aid to travelers on the road; he bends double and furrows at the brow to examine flowers crushed by wagon wheels.

He clicks his tongue and murmurs _what a waste,_ like his heart is breaking.  It makes Therion fucking sick.

(What a _fucking_ waste.  How many times had Therion heard those words?  Spat onto barroom floors when he put off pretty women with his cold face and clipped words.  Snarled from above when something went wrong and they had to cut early, leaving part of the haul behind.  Laughed into his ear with a warm arm around his shoulders as all the king’s men swarmed like ants looking for quarry they’d never catch.  What a waste, eh? 

Darius had never liked it when Therion looked at him too long.  Ghost eyes, he’d spit at him, devil eyes.  You put a curse on me and I’ll cut them out of your skull.  And then later—he’d use his broad hands to tug Therion’s hair out of the way and hold his head in place.  As Therion looked away—aside and down, towards the ground—Darius would say: God, just look at you, god, it’s rarer than jewels.

What a waste indeed.)

In a very practical sense, Therion feels no shame for his scars.  They all have them.  H’aanit’s been bitten and clawed and all but gutted as an occupational hazard.  Olberic led a long warrior’s life and has had no shortage of hard labor since being abandoned by it.  Even Tressa, soft as she is, has a body marked by life.

And besides, it’s easier for them to see the result of skin sloughed off by a sheer rock face.  Let their disgust keep them at bay.  It’s _easier_ this way, just _simpler._ Therion hopes when they whisper behind their hands they’re making him a monster.

It’s only Alfyn’s eyes that Therion can feel on his skin.  When it comes to the others it’s (easier, fucking _better this way),_ but Alfyn knows too much.  Alfyn, who makes it so easy to forget that flawless knowledge of anatomy is knocking around in that empty skull of his.  Alfyn, who could peel back his skin and already know what’s waiting underneath.  Alfyn, to whom _everyone_ is flesh and blood and bone.

(Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, the shame he thought he’d stamped out flares to life beneath that soft green gaze, and he’s a child again—he wants to go back to the Cliftlands where he’s a ghost and unwanted and free, where he’s already survived everyone’s greatest fear and come out the other side _stronger_ and _better this way._ He wants to go back to before this all began and he wants to forget and _be_ forgotten.)

He can tell Alfyn’s at least trying not to stare.  When Therion turns to him with his eyebrow quirked, he quickly looks away with a blush flooding his face—ashamed, no doubt, of his academic, voyeuristic curiosity.  Therion burrows down inside himself and hopes the dirt walls hold when the storm comes.

He wakes in the middle of the night in a Flamesgrace inn to the fireplace barren and ice creeping up the windows.  He’s warm enough curled around his own heat beneath the inn’s heavy quilt and his own mantle, but when he goes to pull the covers more securely around himself, his fingers brush something worn soft and homespun rather than the sturdy fabric he expects.  Newly shivering hands pull the cloth into sight.

Somewhere in the room Alfyn must be cold and aching, but happy to have given of his own warmth that someone else might be more comfortable. 

Therion lies awake for hours with fistfuls of fabric held over his mouth.

\--

Therion tries to avoid Alfyn’s makeshift infirmary.  As much as his heart swells (like a wound infected) at Alfyn’s dogged kindness and determined defiance towards that old man, there’s something…off about Miguel.  Therion’s seen it before.  In Darius, mostly, when he thought Therion wasn’t looking, and then after he stopped caring about Therion much at all.  Something a little like bloody teeth.

With creeping dread in his soul, Therion wants to warn Alfyn, to protect him.  But more than anything else, he wants to be proven wrong.  He wants Miguel to get back to his family.  He wants to spend his whole life watching Alfyn make miracles.  And then he wants to vomit until Darius’s voice is purged from him—a tried-and-true remedy for poison.

But in the end, Therion’s instincts win out, as they so often do.  Therion is only a few feet behind Alfyn when he chases Miguel into the forest to save that little boy.  His coward’s heart is all too glad to be behind him, so he doesn’t have to see their faces reflected as Alfyn is buried in this betrayal.

The four of them—Alfyn and Therion as well as Cyrus and H’aanit—chase Miguel down to a clearing, where he stands over his hostage and gloats about his victory, wasting time with words while the kid bleeds out.  Fire flying from Cyrus’s hands ignites the edge of Miguel’s tattered cloak, distracting him long enough for Linde to rush in and grab the boy as carefully as she can in her jaws. Alfyn surges forward to engage Miguel, but, finally looking around the clearing and doing the math, he dashes into the forest, no doubt to find easier marks to terrorize.

As he disappears into the tree line, Alfyn bellows in fury.  “Get back here, you coward!  Gods be _damned!”_ He swings his axe and buries it in a nearby tree.  “Can’t let him get away.  This is all my _fault.”_

The anguish in his voice—it can’t be borne.  Cyrus and H’aanit are across the clearing with the child.  Miguel is getting farther and farther away.  Alfyn buries his face in his hands and groans.

And in that instant, Therion makes up his mind.

It doesn’t matter that this shouldn’t be his fight.  He bears some of the burden for this as well—he should have spoken up.  And now Alfyn is hurting.  He has to at least _try_ to make things right.

In his haste, Miguel has left an easy trail to follow, barreling through the underbrush and leaving gouges in his wake where he’s swept obstacles aside with his spears.  Light-footed and quick, Therion gives chase.  It’s only a few scant minutes before Miguel realizes he’s being followed and turns to fight.

“I’ve seen you, boy, lurking around, keeping your distance,” he says, then grins as he thrusts at Therion’s heart.  “Mooning after our mutual friend, yeah?”

Therion grits his teeth and whips a knife from his sleeve towards Miguel, who dodges smoothly, and he swings a second knife towards the shaft of one spear while he’s distracted.  The blade thuds into the wood and catches on its reinforced core.  Stupid (stupid) of him to think that a thug like Miguel wouldn’t have high-quality equipment.  He leaps back to avoid a swing that nearly cuts him in two, readying another knife.

Therion’s third blade has better success and grazes Miguel’s shoulder as he pivots to lead Therion bounding further into the trees and away from the clearing.  Surely Alfyn, Cyrus, and H’aanit must be nearby—even if Cyrus’s magic is hamstrung by fear of doing damage to the forest, if they could just pin Miguel down long enough to disarm him—

“Came prepared like a good little boy, huh?  Clever.  But you’ll run out of little fangs soon enough,” Miguel taunts.  His arm bleeds steadily, a blotch of bright red staining the bandages Alfyn applied only hours ago.

The reminder is stark.  This ungrateful bastard—

Distracted by his anger, Therion is caught off guard when Miguel goes on the offensive.  As he throws himself out of the path of Miguel’s whirlwind, he tries to dodge back towards the clearing, where the boy should be halfway back to Saintsbridge right now and Cyrus stands less of a chance of starting a forest fire.

If Cyrus is still out there.  Maybe they all decided Miguel wasn’t worth chasing after all.  Maybe they figured one thief would be enough to catch another.  Maybe they hadn’t seen Therion go.  Or maybe this was a good chance to get rid of them both.

If he’d had back up. (Stupid to rely on others.)  If he hadn’t spent so much time fighting on nothing but rocks and dirt. (Stupid to stay in one place so long).  If, if, if.  (Stupid, stupid, stupid). 

Whatever the case, wherever the blame truly lies, Therion’s the only one feeling the consequences when, swerving out of the path of another jab from Miguel, his foot catches on a root and sends him sprawling, his last knife skidding a good six feet away.

He tries to scramble to his feet, swallowing down the scream that threatens to escape when he puts weight on his ankle.  Miguel’s footsteps are loud through the leaves behind him, deliberate and slow, teasing, and Therion’s dead, he’s a dead man. 

Any second now he’ll feel the spear punching through his chest.  It’ll be a different death than the one he’s known before—a single point of agony, rather than his every bone shattering to dust.  He _hopes_ that Cyrus and Alfyn are far enough away now—will the town be far enough?  The last thing Therion wants as he waits to die is for no one to have to hear him screaming.

“Tut, tut, giving up already?”

Rather than the mortal wound Therion had expected, he’s instead jerked back by his scarf, lifted to his feet, choking.  He clutches the fabric with both hands and kicks out wildly.  His injured foot connects with Miguel’s knee, sending a wave of fire up his leg, but he grits his teeth and kicks again.  Miguel laughs as he lets go, letting Therion breathe again.

“I was having fun, little tea leaf.  Ya don’t get to bow out just yet—not when it’ll be all the more fun killin’ you with a little audience.”

Therion gropes blindly for his sword, but Miguel throws him back to the ground and kicks it away to join his knife. 

“None of that, now, or I’ll take a hand.” Miguel waggles one spear as he makes the threat.  “You and me, we’re just going to have a nice sit while we wait for the cavalry to arrive.”

“No one is coming, fool.  You might as well just do it,” Therion spits.

“Oh, now isn’t this just _precious._ Your adorable nobility isn’t going to save our mutual friend, you know.  He’ll be coming for you, no doubt, and when he does…” Miguel grins savagely and presses his foot to Therion’s ankle.

Cold nausea ripples through him at the same time the burning wrongness of bone scraping bone devours his leg.  This time he can’t quite hold back a hoarse, bitten-off scream.  Through the trees, a voice answers, a distant cry of his name.

He should shout a warning.  He should want Alfyn to stay away, to tend to the boy, to save himself.  But in that moment, all he wants to do is sob with relief. Not alone.  If he’s going to die, at least this time it won’t be alone.

Miguel’s grin widens.  “And now the fun begins.”  Then he continues, conversationally, leaning on one spear like an old man on a walking stick as he bows over Therion’s prone body, “You know, a tea leaf like yourself—ya look like you’ve seen some hard livin’.  I’m surprised you didn’t warn our mutual friend he was gettin’ in over his head!  Not much of a friend, are ya?”

“I don’t tell him what to do.  Healing’s his business, not mine.”

It’s easy to use the pain in his leg as an excuse and play it up, writhing in the dirt for Miguel’s amusement, positioning himself so that his hands are behind his back.  He’s lost his sword and his knives, but he still has his belt dagger as a last resort, and if Miguel would only pull him up again—

Movement in the trees to their left, but still a ways off.  Therion is running out of time.  He twists again, shaking his hair out of his eye, and finally he can wrap his hand around his dagger’s hilt.

Miguel’s loud, braying laughter cracks through the air, and as if Therion had commanded him, he reaches down to haul him up by the neck again.  In the same instant he’s lifted bodily from the ground, he jerks his dagger free and sends it hurtling towards the side of Miguel’s head.

But either he’s too slow or Miguel simply saw it coming.  He catches Therion’s wrist in the hand not wrapped around his neck, and Therion lets out a scream of rage at his last failure.

“Oh, oh, _oh,”_ Miguel says, grinning like the cat that got the canary.  “Look at that _fire!_ And even more than that, let’s have a _look,_ shall we?”

He drops Therion an inch, and even though his leg buckles beneath him he manages to stay upright.  Miguel’s grip on his wrist is iron-tight, but that doesn’t stop Therion from fighting, from stabbing his dagger forward with every last ounce of his strength, from grappling with Miguel’s other hand.  He’s discarded his spears, and it rankles—like he’d thought Therion so pitiful and defeated he didn’t even need his namesake to keep him down. 

But in the end, it’s the truth.  One-legged and at a disadvantage in height and weight, Therion can’t hold Miguel off forever, can’t stop him from reaching out and cupping Therion’s cheek in a parody of a lover’s caress as he bears him back onto his bad foot.  Therion cries out again.  This time, there’s no answer from the trees.

He’s been hurt worse than this before.  When did he get so _weak?_

“Let’s have a _look_ at you,” Miguel repeats, sounding almost giddy.  The hand on Therion’s face strokes back his hair and pins it behind his ear, and—Therion only has one eye with which to take in Miguel’s face, but he’s adjusted to walking the world half-blind.

He wants to curl into nothingness, to disappear, to run, to hide, every prey animal instinct he’ll _never_ be able to hate away.  He yanks desperately at the hold around his wrist, but Miguel isn’t budging, and it only makes him laugh again, a grating, too-familiar sound.

Miguel’s eyebrows turn down, and his grinning mouth pouts in a parody of sympathy.  “ _Ahhh,”_ he sighs, and his thumb strokes Therion’s brow, following the line of the scar bisecting his eye and cheek.  “We _match.”_

Therion jerks in his grip, not even trying to free his dagger hand anymore, just the wild thrashing of an animal in a trap.  The red hair, the ( _tea leaf_ ), the feeling of callouses on his skin—bits and pieces of Therion’s mind start to slide away no matter how desperately he tries to hold on.

Where the _hellfire_ is Alfyn?  Therion had thought—thought he heard—thought he was coming—

“ _Poor_ little tea leaf,” Miguel croons, “Now I see why ya said they weren’t coming.  You’ve already grasped it.”

“Don’t—” Therion gasps.  He doesn’t need to hear it.  He doesn’t need to hear it _said._ He wants to hold on to the extra warmth in the cold dark, to the voice shouting his name through the trees.  He doesn’t need to be reminded of what’s real.

“How long do ya think Alfyn there will tolerate ya?  That scar of yours is just like mine, eh?”

Therion tries one last time, heart pounding out of his chest, pushes with everything he has, brings his hand up to try and rip Miguel’s hand away from his face, to cover himself again.

“What will he do when he sees this?  How long will he be able to stand looking at you, when it’ll just remind him of _me?”_

Therion screams again, in rage and grief instead of in pain, wordless because all his words were useless long ago.  He has no rebuttal, nothing he can say, no human defiance left in him and—

Before he runs out of breath, a different scream splits the air, as Miguel seizes and abruptly releases him.  The momentum of Therion’s straining finally pays off, and he can’t stop the downward motion of his dagger as it plunges into Miguel’s neck.  As the man crumples, Therion sees the reason—an axe, buried between Miguel’s shoulder blades.

Therion’s other leg finally gives, and his eye rolls back into his head before he can see anything else but a smear of green flying towards him. 

Alfyn catches him before he hits the ground.

\--

They spend three days more in Saintsbridge while Ophilia finishes the Kindling and Therion heals up enough that Alfyn unhappily clears him to walk again, as long as he promises to use a crutch.  On the final day, Alfyn mutters something about business and leaves the inn—though why he bothered to give Therion a reason at all is a mystery, as he’s mostly been scarce these past few days.  Primrose sat with him for a bit, so Therion hasn’t been left totally to stew in his thoughts, though little was said between them.  It’s a good thing, too, because Therion is sure that if he opened his mouth, nothing but Miguel’s words would fall out.

It’s been three days since he looked Alfyn in the eye.  He’s too afraid Alfyn won’t be looking back.

By the time Alfyn returns to their room, Therion’s been pacing for hours, a limping step-drag, his bag already packed.  He hears the footsteps on the stairs and recognizes their eager, steady cadence with more than enough time to make an escape—it would hardly be his first second-story exit, even with the added risk of further injury. But something keeps him rooted to the rut he’s been wearing in the floor.

Therion freezes mid-step when the door swings open, and Alfyn freezes a second later, hand on the doorknob, eyes darting from Therion to the bag sitting on his bed and back again.  With every pass, his face falls, he bites his lip, his brows draw together. 

God, Therion should have been gone by now, if only to avoid seeing that face.

“I was just leaving,” he blurts, even though it’s a lie.  It shouldn’t be.  He packed a bag and everything. It’s only base sentimentality—(Your greatest weakness, idiot)—that’s prevented him from making a clean break.  “I figured you’d want me gone before you had to see me again, considering.  You were just a bit quicker than I was expecting.”

Alfyn’s eyes are huge, and he takes a step backward.  He clutches the doorframe and draws himself up to his full height—it’s probably unconscious, but he’s doing a damn good job of blocking Therion’s best exit.  A prickle of dread (trapped, trapped) dances across the back of Therion’s neck.  He hadn’t thought Alfyn would _hurt_ him, but maybe he was too naïve.  Thieves, after all, are the root of the problem.  Alfyn had offered Miguel the chance for a new life, and Miguel threw it back in his face.  Why make the same mistake twice?  Therion edges closer to the window, just in case.  His ankle will make it a rough landing, but Alfyn has bound it tightly enough that as long as he rolls he should still be able to walk.

“What do you mean?” Alfyn asks, sounding so wounded Therion instantly regrets saying anything at all.  “Why would I want you gone?  I never want you to leave!  Please, whatever I did, let’s talk about it—”

“You didn’t do anything.”  Does he really want Therion to be the one who spells it out?  Alfyn isn’t cunning or cruel enough to play the fool about something like this. There’s something Therion is missing, and there’s nothing he hates more than arguing from a disadvantage.  He shifts off his bad foot and glances again at the window, but every time he looks away he just sees green in his peripheral vision and he has to grind his teeth to drown out the buzzing in his head.

“Then what do you mean?  Let’s—how about we go to the bar and talk about it over a pint, eh?  I know I could use a drink after today!  What d’you say?”  His voice takes on a tinny, false brightness, an attempt at replicating his usual tone.  It hurts Therion’s ears, too sharp and loud in the little room.

“I’m not going to hang around until you decide I’m a lost cause,” Therion finally says.  “Better for everyone if I go now and skip all the waiting for the inevitable.”

Alfyn’s face crumples, and he whispers “ _Therion”_ on an exhale so desperate he might’ve been holding his breath since this confrontation began.  It’s the kind of noise a man might make with a fist in his gut.  He searches Therion’s face again and again as he wets his lips and tries to speak but falls short of the words.  Therion’s insides yearn to open up and ooze bile between them, burrow deeper and deeper into all his ugliness, to prove himself right. 

“I know you’d probably rather keep an eye on me so you can step in when I cross the line like Miguel did, but that doesn’t sound like the best way to a long and happy life for yours truly, so—"

“ _Aelfric_ , Therion, stop, you have to know I would never…” is what Alfyn comes up with, and Therion’s stomach flies into his throat.

“And why not?” He croaks, “Why not?  What makes me different, Alfyn?  I want to hear you say it—I want to hear you justify it to yourself.”

Alfyn steps fully into the room, and Therion takes an equal step back.  He has to do this, has to make Alfyn see.  He has to push and push until something gives, because he can’t spend another day waiting to be thrown away.

Miguel’s words echo in Therion’s head: _how long will he be able to stand looking at you?_ But Alfyn hasn’t _stopped_ looking at him.  Therion’s back is to the corner now, and Alfyn is still between him and the door.  He knows he’s the faster of the two, but there isn’t much space between the doorframe and Alfyn’s bulk, and his injury will reduce his speed.  It will be a close shot, and he only has one chance before Alfyn can react.  Leaving behind his stuff will suck, and he’ll have to steal twice as much to make up the leaves and to feed himself, but—

“You wouldn’t do anything Miguel did!  Hurting a child, causing all that mayhem, and, and, _lyin’_ to me just so he could take advantage and then hurt me later!  No matter what you’ve convinced yourself you’re capable of, Therion, I know you wouldn’t do _any_ of that.”

“Says who? Says _you?_ Just because you don’t personally know any of the hundreds of people I’ve stolen from?  Who says I didn’t lift bread straight out of a starving kid’s mouth—who says I haven’t left just as much _violence_ in my wake, just because you didn’t personally smell the blood in the air?”

Alfyn pants like he’s been running for his life, and Therion does the same, just quieter.

“It’s just _different,_ Therion! You can’t tell me you’d be able to use a child as a shield, because I won’t believe you!”

“You’ve only known me for a few weeks.  How long has it been?  Two months, at most?  You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

Alfyn’s chest is heaving; his eyes are too bright. Therion would do anything to stop, but his jaw is too tight, his mouth won’t stop moving.  The words won’t stop coming, like a flood, like an avalanche, and he wishes he would just _drown_ already. 

(You’re a good man, Alfyn, too good for me, and I’m afraid I’m poisoning you just by sharing your air.  I’ve had a knife in my lungs since you told that man he could repay you by giving up a life of thievery.  Can’t you see I don’t know anything else?  Is there any way you can show me?  Am I allowed?  Is it okay?  Is it not too late already? Does my ledger already run too red, or can I ever move out of the shadow of disappointment in your eyes?

There are a thousand other words with no sharp edges, it’s just that Therion never learned how to wield them.)

“Maybe you’re right.”

Therion’s heartbeat lurches; his gut turns to water.  It’s a sensation that’s most like—

(It’s like falling.)

Maybe he flinches.  Maybe he jerks back like he’s been struck across the face, like a dog that’s been kicked in the ribs.  The only thing he can hear through the rushing in his ears is a single hysterical laugh—his own—at the words he’s been waiting so long to hear.

“Maybe you’re right!” Alfyn repeats, “I don’t know ya all that well.  I don’t know if anyone does.  But you can’t hide everything, and as short as two months is, we’ve hardly at all been apart.  So maybe I don’ need to know _everything_ to know that—that you’re a good man, even if you’ve had your troubles.”

 _I don’t know if anyone does_.

For years it’s been a goal, a shield, a point of pride.  He was a ghost.  Walls couldn’t hold him in.  He was a second displaced, an inch away from the rest of the world, and it made him a legend.  Now it just feels like the ground is falling away.

It’s the way Alfyn says it—frustrated, regretful.  Like he wishes it wasn’t true.  The same way he’d argued with Miguel that sure, sometimes people had to do bad things, but there was always a way back to the light.  It would take hours, if not days, to open his mouth and tell Alfyn everything he is, everything he isn’t, everything he may never be again.  Easier to show him.  The thought flashes across Therion’s mind, and his hand moves before he can stop it. 

Alfyn argues that they’re different, but Therion hasn’t been able to look in a mirror since, even with his face covered, without seeing Miguel’s face superimposed on his own.  He should know.  He has to know, or none of his words mean anything.

Therion pushes his hair aside.

A long moment passes in stillness and silence.

Alfyn’s gaze is trained scalpel-sharp on the milky ruin of Therion’s eye.  His hand is half-raised and trembling, but Therion’s is steady as it bares him to the world.

(In the early days, trying to sleep broken in caves and under bushes, just for a few hours respite from the thirst and the pain, he’d curled up fetal with his hands over his face, tugging and pinching the edges of that wound until his cheek went wet with blood.  It would have been one thing if Darius had held him down, hand to his throat, knees to his hips, and savored the easy parting of skin under his knife, cooed through his shattering screams.  But in the end, he probably didn’t even know where the blade had caught, what sent Therion plummeting into the canyon below.  Could’ve been a nick to his brow.  Could’ve slit his throat.  Just a smear on the end of a knife, just a stain on the red, red rock.

It was over so quickly.  It was over.  In the early days, that open, seething pit in his chest knew nothing but that at all.

But, years later, the scar is still there—just as much a part of him as all the rest of the skin so stubbornly lashed to his bones.  It’s there.  Straight, deliberate, manufactured.  He can try, with his hair, with his body language, with everything he has to hide it, but he can never look at himself without remembering ever again.)

He’s so tired, Alfyn is.  Dark exhaustion rings his eyes and his smiles have all but faded away, since that man.  Therion would kill him again for it, better this time.  That good, gold heart in Alfyn’s chest might take the burden for that life, but Therion knows dying well enough to know what the last blow had been. Still, Therion wants the chance to do it over.  To do it better.  To prove to the voice in his head that he isn’t a helpless child anymore.

“I’ll kill them.”

The words, a mirror of Therion’s own thoughts, sound _wrong_ in Alfyn’s strong voice, wrong enough to make Therion’s heart jump several beats.

“What?” He blurts out.

“Whoever it was,” Alfyn continues.  Jerkily, Therion drops his hand, and his hair falls back into place.  Alfyn says, “I swear on—on my life, on this satchel, on my honor, Therion, I’ll _kill—”_

“Alfyn, what are you talking about?”

“I could do it.  I would.  To protect you.”

Therion gapes.  He should—he should push his hair back again, give Alfyn a second look.  What is he _talking_ about?  He should be disgusted.  He should have an axe in his hand.  Does he not see what Therion sees?  What Miguel saw in a single instant?

Proof lay waiting carved into Therion’s skin that he was just as poisonous as he feared, and here Alfyn is talking about _protection,_ and—

“You’re crying,” Therion says, voice soft and just a little full of wonder.

Ever since…before, Therion has shied away from touch, from a friendly arm around his shoulder, from a steadying hand at his back.  But he’s never felt anything as strong as he does the urge to reach out now and put a hand on Alfyn’s arm, to say: I’m here.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.

A choked, frustrated sob catches in Alfyns throat, and he throws his arm over his face to hide his eyes.  “You thought I’d leave you to die!  Because you’re a thief, because—because someone hurt you so bad, you think— _please,_ Therion, I can’t stand it—"

Sigh after sigh fills up Therion’s chest and gusts out through his chapped lips.  He wishes he could _breathe._ But, suffocating, he says, “I didn’t show you as—as a test.  I wasn’t _testing_ you.  I just wanted…I thought you would…I don’t know.  I don’t know why I did it.”

Aelfric, why even open his mouth.  Shame is hot in the back of his throat, and the longer Alfyn’s—green, green—eyes stay hidden the more Therion wants to plummet through the floor.  The only thing Therion is worse at than a confession is an apology.

Outside the window, stretching for miles and miles in the dying light, is the road that could carry him far away from Saintsbridge.  The road was there outside of Clearbrook, too, and outside of every other town in Orsterra on every wasted night, a thousand times that Therion could have made his escape.  What would actually change if he left tonight?  Tressa can haggle down inn prices and keep everyone fed almost as well as he can.  Between H’aanit and Olberic, it isn’t as if he’s making a significant contribution in the form of muscle.  If he leaves tonight, Alfyn can stop looking over his shoulder to see the hurt he’s left in his wake.  Everyone will be fine, and he can just…stop with these detours, stop being led around like a limping wolf after the rest of the pack.  Let them to all their noble purpose and get back to the shadows, where he belongs.

“Being an apothecary—helping people—it’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Alfyn says finally, voice cracking.  “If I can’t even do that, what am I supposed to do?”

“…You help people every day,” Therion responds.

“Not always.  S—sometimes people don’t _want_ my help.  Or—or the hurt is too big for me to make a difference, and I don’t know what to _do,_ I—”

“You _always_ make a difference.  Maybe you can’t always work miracles but believe me when I say peoples’ lives would be worse without you in them.”

“That mother’s life would be.  That child’s.  If I hadn’t helped Miguel, then _you_ wouldn’t have been hurt.  How can you say that, after everything?  When I heard you cry out in the forest, I thought I’d be too late, and if I’d lost you—”

Therion sucks in all the oxygen his lungs can take.  It’s now or never.

“Why do you think I tried to leave before you got back?  Why do you think I _didn’t?_ No one’s life has been as changed by you as mine, Alfyn.  That’s how I can say it.  That’s why I thought you’d want me gone—because you’ve changed me, and I have _nothing_ inside me to give you in return.”

Speech over, Therion tugs his scarf up over his mouth, as if he could collect the words inside it and take them back.  A flush sweeps over his cheeks.  How stupid and sappy and pathetic he sounds—it’s only Alfyn’s good nature that’s keeping him from laughing at him. 

“ _Therion.”_

It’s a sob, it’s a prayer.  It takes all of Therion’s senses to comprehend and leaves him blind and deaf and numb.  His brain is still stumbling towards understanding everything contained in one word, two syllables, his own name, when Alfyn is suddenly upon him, sweeping him up into an embrace.

“Sorry,” Alfyn gasps, “It’s just—you—oh, _Therion—"_

He claws desperately at Alfyn’s back, scrabbling for purchase, and Alfyn’s arms tighten around him.  One hand, blazingly hot, comes up to cup the back of Therion’s neck under his scarf, and a wave of shudders rolls down his spine.  Alfyn hunches over, drapes over, like he can cover every inch of Therion in his warmth.

And maybe he can.  Therion’s desperate hands finally settle for just clutching fistfuls of Alfyn’s vest—he still remembers the smell of it, of Alfyn, from that one cold night.  That scent surrounds him now, sending his head spinning, and he buries his head in Alfyn’s chest to chase it down.  Alfyn’s other arm squeezes him around the waist, nearly taking him off his feet.

He’d be helpless if that happened, but the place in his head that should be screaming at him to _run_ is blessedly silent.  He’s safe.  He’s been bare entirely and Alfyn never looked away.  Now he just wants to be closer—to climb inside this feeling and let it carry him, let it lift him up.  He does the next best thing: crawling deeper into Alfyn’s arms, snatching every inch he’s given.  And maybe he’s taking too much, like he always has—but then Alfyn shifts, lifts—Therion, instinctually, wraps his legs around Alfyn’s solid middle.  His face is tucked into Alfyn’s neck now, where his skin is slightly salty, where his hair curls soft and wispy behind his ears, where his life beats in his veins.

“Is this okay?” Alfyn whispers hoarsely.

How is Therion supposed to speak?  (Now who’s asking too much?)

“ _You’re_ okay,” Therion manages, slurred out through a numb tongue.  Nothing but Alfyn feels quite real, not even his own body. 

“Please don’t go.  I’ve got you,” Alfyn whispers, “I’ve got you.  Please, please.”

Therion opens his eyes, and all he can see is green.  It’s Alfyn’s favorite color—the color of his trade, the color of life, the color of his eyes.  Therion’s been under green before.  He’s had it draped over his shoulders on freezing nights, when it was sharing heat or losing fingers.  He’s seen it fluttering against the blazing sun, seconds before death.  He saw it every day for eight years of his life, and in the time since he’s never been able to look it head-on.  Another benefit of living in the Cliftlands. But he left that behind when he stepped out of the canyons and onto the riverbank.  Every day since, there’s been Alfyn—there, and green, and never knowing any better. 

He’d thought that the color of trees and meadows and herbal tea on a cold, sick day was just lost to him, like trust, like days without aching.  His life adjusted to walking the world half-blind.  Where other people dream of flying, Therion doesn’t even get to wake before hitting the ground.

But here, for the first time, warm and safe, Therion pushes off, and Alfyn clutches him through the freefall, like he’s clutching him now.  A lifeline.  His heart is beating so steadily right beside Therion’s.  Like a puppet finally off its strings, Therion goes limp in Alfyn’s arms; he lets himself be carried over to his bed.  Who knows how long he’ll let Alfyn hold him like this.  Maybe forever.  Maybe the world can go on turning without them, dragonstones be damned.

“I won’t go,” Therion says, and is rewarded by a hand cradling the back of his head and the wetness of tears against his cheek.

“I won’t go,” he says, “I’ve got you.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at haloud.tumblr.com or @haloudd on twitter!


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